Television is ubiquitous in modern life. In addition to substantive programming, most television broadcasts also include commercial messages. These commercials are in most cases a necessary aspect of television broadcasts, since much of television broadcasters' revenue comes from the sponsors of those commercials.
In most cases, television broadcast signals alternate in time between providing television program signals and providing commercial signals. The commercial signals usually come in bursts of multiple commercial signals. That is, television program signals are usually not interrupted for only a single commercial signal, but rather are interrupted for at least two if not more different commercial signals.
The general (e.g., national) television audience contains many different audience segments, which can be defined based upon a variety of different criteria such as the location of the audience, the income of the audience, the interest of the audience, and the occupation of the audience, etc. While general television commercials intended for a national audience are regularly broadcast today, it would be preferable if commercials could be tailored to specific audience segments within the general television audience. This is because the commercials that most effectively influence a particular audience segment are those commercials that are targeted to that audience segment.
The ability to direct the broadcast of carefully tailored commercials to those audience segments for whom those commercials are tailored is desirable both for the sponsors of those commercials and for the broadcasters. From the commercial sponsors' perspective, the purchase of commercial advertising becomes a more worthwhile investment as the commercials become better directed at their intended audience segments. Additionally, from the broadcasters' perspective, the ability to broadcast commercials to more refined audience segments makes those commercial broadcasts more valuable overall, and thus more profitable.
One basis for differentiating audience segments is by geographic region. That is, while some sponsors of commercials wish their commercials to be directed to the general television audience nationally (or over a similarly large region), there are many other sponsors of commercials that wish their commercials to be directed only to a specific television audience located within a relatively small geographic region such as a city or county. Examples of the latter type of commercial sponsors include car dealerships and supermarkets.
This targeting of localized audiences with locally-tailored commercials is made possible today by the existence of local television stations around the nation. That is, local television stations receive national television broadcast signals from one of the national broadcasters. Within these national television broadcast signals are program signals alternating with series of commercial signals. Typically, within each series of commercial signals, there are one or more time slots at which the local television station can substitute a local commercial signal in place of a national commercial signal (or insert a local commercial signal within a time slot that otherwise would be blank time).
While such targeting of local audiences does allow commercial sponsors and television broadcasters to more effectively direct some commercials toward their intended audiences, this type of targeting leaves much to be desired. To begin with, the process by which local commercial signals are substituted in place of the national commercial signals forming part of the national television broadcast signals is difficult to perform and is expensive. In particular, even though the national broadcasters provide general scheduling information as to the times at which the local television stations should be able to substitute local commercial signals for the national commercial signals, this scheduling information is frequently inaccurate due to unexpected changes in what is being broadcast nationally. Thus, in order to substitute local commercial signals in place of national commercial signals, local television stations typically must employ a human operator who monitors the national television broadcast and manually switches on the local commercial signals in place of the national commercial signals at the appropriate times.
Further, even though local television stations covering cities or counties offer the ability to direct commercials intended for local audiences to those local audiences, this type of targeting is still quite unrefined insofar as there are many different and identifiable audience segments within any given local audience. It would be desirable if a system and method for broadcasting could be developed that allowed for even more localized control over the broadcasting of commercial signals, so that commercial signals could be more closely tailored to more narrow audience segments.
For example, many car dealerships, supermarkets, department stores and other stores, as well as many other public or semi-public areas such as airports, exercise facilities, or sports bars have multiple televisions or other video displays that are fed with television broadcast signals provided from the local television station (or even directly from a national broadcasting station). These multiple televisions often are positioned at different locations within these facilities. In such circumstances, it often would be desirable if the commercials being broadcast at these localized televisions were more closely tailored to relate to the specific audiences at those localized areas, or to a specific product which should be promoted in that localized area.
For example, in a supermarket it would be desirable to the supermarket owner if local commercials being displayed on a television near the meat and poultry section concerned the supermarket's current sales relating to meat products, while local commercials being displayed on a television near the fresh produce section concerned the supermarket's current sales relating to those goods. Similarly, in an airport, it would be desirable to merchants within the airport if televisions in a first airport terminal broadcast commercials promoting the purchase of food or periodicals at shops located in that first terminal, while televisions in a second airport terminal broadcast commercials promoting purchases at the shops located in that second terminal. And in a like fashion, in a sports bar, it would be desirable to the establishment to promote the establishment specials and/or to promote trips to sporting events.
Further, in many of these environments it would be desirable if the commercials being broadcast within those environments did not contravene other objectives of parties operating within those environments. For example, it would be desirable, for an airline operating at a particular gate of an airport, if a television at that gate broadcast commercials corresponding to the airline operating at that airport gate instead of commercials corresponding to a competing airline. Likewise, it would be desirable, for the owner of a store, if televisions within the store broadcast commercials promoting the store rather than one of its competitors.
One method of directing different commercials tailored for particular audience segments to those segments would simply involve providing numerous different individual television broadcast signals that were respectively tailored for each particular audience segment. Thus, for example, a food store with five televisions in five different food areas could be provided with five different television broadcast signals. While each of these broadcast signals might share the same main program content, the different broadcast signals could respectively include different commercials tailored for broadcast at the different areas within the store.
While this type of system might work in theory, in practice this type of system would be excessively costly to implement. In particular, such a system would require impractically-large amounts of bandwidth. Because of the impracticality of this type of system, and the existing need in the marketplace for improved targeting of advertisements to specific audience segments, it would be advantageous if another type of system and method could be developed that allowed for more refined control of television broadcast signals than is presently available so that commercials could be directed toward narrow audience segments other than those defined by the geographic scope of local television stations.